When I was in high school, we had a chess club.
As it turned out, there was always one player without a partner and that player would wind up at my board, kibitzing.
I decided that it was necessary to find a remedy for this situation, so I invented a 3-player chess game.
I introduced this game to the club and it did not take long for the entire club to be sitting and kibitzing at the 3-player board, instead.
The one interesting aspect of playing this game was that after a couple of hours of play, we would go back to the normal 2-player chess and we would experience a sort of mental disorientation. It was a very strange feeling.
Since this game involves more than 2 people, it becomes very political. Alliances are made and broken with back-stabbing being a normal occurance.
I've posted the general rules we've used. We had come up with exceptions and variations, including a contingency for when one player concedes. Such variences are up to the player's preferences.
Enjoy!
Instructions for 3-player chess.
Copyright 2004
By Alexander Nivichanov
The starting positions:
Notice the extra bishop between the queen and the king.
Pawns move either directly ahead or to the first hex to its
left or right:
Rooks move in a straight line along alternating colors.
Knights move 2 hex spaces, along the same color and then at
a right angle to the left or right.
Bishops move in a straight line, along the same color.
The queen moves like a rook or a bishop.
The King moves in any direction, but only one space.
Pieces can move between pawns, including the pawn, bishop,
queen, king and the knight.
The bishop can move between the pawns, along its own color.
If the bishop stops at the fourth hexagon, it places the two opposing
kings in check, at the same time.
It is usual for the first player to do so, for their
opening move.
Pawn capture:
Pawns capture by moving forward to the left or right.
Castling – king/queen king/rook
Castling may be done in one of three methods.
1)
Left or right rook-king castling.
This is when the back row, between the rook and king is clear of other
pieces and neither the king nor the rook has been moved and there is no hexagon
being covered by opposing pieces.
The king is moved to the rook and the rook is moved to the other side of the
king.
2)
Queen-king castling. This may be performed when
the bishop is no longer between the king and queen, the space is not being
covered by opposing pieces and neither the king, nor the queen has yet been
moved. The king is moved to the
space next to the queen and the queen is moved to the space vacated by the king.
Checkmate – remove king
Checkmate may be called when a player’s king is covered by
opposing pieces as well as all the neighboring hexagons.
However, the king is still in play until the king has been capture in the
same manner as any other piece.
Thus the king may actually move “into check” or a space being covered by an
opposing piece. If the owner of
this piece is then placed into check, that player must defend his king, prior to
capturing the “checkmated” piece, thus allowing a second move for that king to
escape.
Rook corner
The corner where the rook resides is not a full path, so
that an opposing bishop or queen, for example, cannot move past that point to
capture the rook.
In the following diagram, the bishop cannot capture the
rook.
The rook can move out of his corner by either of the two
indicated directions.
Pawn redemption.
When a player’s pawn reaches the opposing side of the
board, it may be redeemed for any of his/her captured pieces, except a pawn.
A player ceases to play when their king is captured.
The rest of the pieces are left on the board as obstacles, which may be
captured by the remaining two players.
The game ends when 2 of the kings have been captured.
